Tuesday, January 18, 2011

No complaining week, day two.

36 hours or so into my complaint-free life, and things are going pretty well - can't complain! (Ha.)

Here are the tricky parts:

Espen, who I spent most of my day with, is an endless source of unforeseen circumstances and surfaces that require cleaning. That is just a fact of life, and something I willingly and knowingly signed up for. However, that doesn't mean that I'm above making it known how I feel about pureed mango splattered across my kitchen or crunching yet another Cheerio under my sock. Sigh. It's not the little guy's fault, and I know it. Something to work on!

While I'm doing pretty well at not complaining out loud, it's hard to stop my internal complaining sessions (I know! After an entire day and a half! Sheesh!). Just this afternoon I was looking out at our backyard, which looked just as glorious as any backyard could when the snow melts and uncovers everything that should have been taken care of before its neglectful owners were surprised by the snow in the first place. Anyway, I looked outside and started thinking about all of the cool stuff we had wanted to do to our yard when we moved in, how we still haven't done it yet, and how we're still unlikely to do it this year because we're going to Norway for five weeks (details to come!), and suddenly I was spiraling out of control into Internal Gripefestapalooza 2011. Of course it's the outward complaining and negativity that I especially want to work on, but doesn't it seem like a more positive attitude should start on the inside?

Seeing as I am in a listy mood, let me tell you about a few things that I don't want to complain about today:

6 comments:

I am so impressed with this goal! I'm very bad at this. Don't be too hard on yourself for not feeling it on the inside yet. There's that old saying (which I simultaneously hate but also think has some merit in some situations) "fake it till you make it." Some times inward changes do start on the outside. When I was trying hard to stop being judgmental of people (which I'm still not great at), I started by trying to stop talking bad about people, and then after awhile of doing that it actually changed out how felt on the inside.

Anywho, alls I'm sayin' is, don't be so hard on yourself for not feeling it on the inside yet, I'm sure it will come!

It's just that complaining can make for such an interesting story--"I waited in the long, boring line, only to have this ugly, poorly-dressed, woman tell me I was in the wrong line. Then when I finally got up to the second, equally ugly and poorly-dressed person, with jewelry on his/her nostril, they told me I didn't have the right paper to begin with! It was horrible!"

Much more of a story than, "I had a lovely day."

Learning to not need to tell a story and just be happy. That's my challenge. And, yes, not complaining to myself--because that's what leads up to the big dramatic story.